once attractive and repellent to me, an odd secret society whose

membership nobody knew, pledged, it was said, to impose Tariff

Reform and an ample constructive policy upon the Conservatives. In

the press, at any rate, they had an air of deliberately organised

power. I have no doubt the rumour of them greatly influenced my

ideas…

In the end I made some very rapid decisions, but for nearly two

years I was hesitating. Hesitations were inevitable in such a

matter. I was not dealing with any simple question of principle,

but with elusive and fluctuating estimates of the trend of diverse

forces and of the nature of my own powers. All through that period

I was asking over and over again: how far are these Confederates

mere dreamers? How far-and this was more vital-are they rendering

lip-service to social organisations? Is it true they desire war

because it confirms the ascendency of their class? How far can

Conservatism be induced to plan and construct before it resists the

thrust towards change. Is it really in bulk anything more than a

mass of prejudice and conceit, cynical indulgence, and a hard

suspicion of and hostility to the expropriated classes in the

community?

That is a research which yields no statistics, an enquiry like

asking what is the ruling colour of a chameleon. The shadowy answer

varied with my health, varied with my mood and the conduct of the

people I was watching. How fine can people be? How generous?-not

incidentally, but all round? How far can you educate sons beyond

the outlook of their fathers, and how far lift a rich, proud, self-

indulgent class above the protests of its business agents and

solicitors and its own habits and vanity? Is chivalry in a class

possible?-was it ever, indeed, or will it ever indeed be possible?

Is the progress that seems attainable in certain directions worth

the retrogression that may be its price?

It was to the Pentagram Circle that I first broached the new

conceptions that were developing in my mind. I count the evening of

my paper the beginning of the movement that created the BLUE WEEKLY

and our wing of the present New Tory party. I do that without any

excessive egotism, because my essay was no solitary man's

production; it was my reaction to forces that had come to me very

large through my fellow-members; its quick reception by them showed

that I was, so to speak, merely the first of the chestnuts to pop.

The atmospheric quality of the evening stands out very vividly in my

memory. The night, I remember, was warmly foggy when after midnight

we went to finish our talk at my house.

We had recently changed the rules of the club to admit visitors, and

so it happened that I had brought Britten, and Crupp introduced

Arnold Shoesmith, my former schoolfellow at City Merchants, and now

the wealthy successor of his father and elder brother. I remember

his heavy, inexpressively handsome face lighting to his rare smile

at the sight of me, and how little I dreamt of the tragic

entanglement that was destined to involve us both. Gane was

present, and Esmeer, a newly-added member, but I think Bailey was

absent. Either he was absent, or he said something so entirely

characteristic and undistinguished that it has left no impression on

my mind.

I had broken a little from the traditions of the club even in my

title, which was deliberately a challenge to the liberal idea: it

was, "The World Exists for Exceptional People." It is not the title

I should choose now-for since that time I have got my phrase of

"mental hinterlander" into journalistic use. I should say now, "The

World Exists for Mental Hinterland."

The notes I made of that opening have long since vanished with a

thousand other papers, but some odd chance has preserved and brought

with me to Italy the menu for the evening; its back black with the

scrawled notes I made of the discussion for my reply. I found it

the other day among some letters from Margaret and a copy of the

1909 Report of the Poor Law Commission, also rich with pencilled

marginalia.

My opening was a criticism of the democratic idea and method, upon

lines such as I have already sufficiently indicated in the preceding

sections. I remember how old Dayton fretted in his chair, and

tushed and pished at that, even as I gave it, and afterwards we were

treated to one of his platitudinous harangues, he sitting back in

his chair with that small obstinate eye of his fixed on the ceiling,

and a sort of cadaverous glow upon his face, repeating-quite

regardless of all my reasoning and all that had been said by others

in the debate-the sacred empty phrases that were his soul's refuge

from reality. "You may think it very clever," he said with a nod of

his head to mark his sense of his point, "not to Trust in the

People. I do." And so on. Nothing in his life or work had ever

shown that he did trust in the people, but that was beside the mark.

He was the party Liberal, and these were the party incantations.

After my preliminary attack on vague democracy I went on to show

that all human life was virtually aristocratic; people must either

recognise aristocracy in general or else follow leaders, which is

aristocracy in particular, and so I came to my point that the

reality of human progress lay necessarily through the establishment

of freedoms for the human best and a collective receptivity and

understanding. There was a disgusted grunt from Dayton, "Superman

rubbish-Nietzsche. Shaw! Ugh!" I sailed on over him to my next